Venice

 “In this film, I was really revisiting a period of my life,” says Alfonso Cuarón of his latest film, Roma. “But I did it in  a very specific way.

The 75th edition of the Venice Film Festival starts on Wednesday, August 29th, on another planet. The moon, to be precise, when Damien Chazelle returns to the Lido to open the fest with First Man, covering the defining years in the life of Neil Armstrong.

Golden Globe nominated director Pablo Larraín confirms that he is one of the brightest young talents in film making with the world premiere of his Jackie, which screened in competition on the Lido. The Chilean director has a gift for casting an oblique light of famous lives – witness the excellent Neruda, which was just screened in Cannes, on the life of his famous countryman and poet.

With a ten minute standing ovation after the first screening of his Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson could hardly have hoped for a more auspicious return to filmmaking. The Word War II epic marks his fifth feature as a director and the first since Apocalypto ten years ago.

If the festival’s worth is judged by the opening, things augur well for this 73rd edition of the Venice Film Festival. Damien Chazelle’s endearing, cinephile, unabashedly romantic musical La La Land is still one of the most buzzed about titles here.

It's hot, humid and gorgeous - on the brink of Fall the Lido island, the easternmost on the Venice lagoon, bordering the Adriatic Sea on its outer shore, becomes a cinema hub of major importance. The oldest film festival in existence, Venice had the ups and downs to be expected in any long career.

The Venice Film Festival opened with a bang – or rather a shimmy and a song – here in a sunny Lido with the world premiere of La La Land, as Damien Chazelle’s sophomore feature lived up to all of its pre-festival buzz (and augured well for a continuing festival streak). From the long tracking shot that envelops an ensemble dance number that erupts from a traffic jam on a freeway ramp  (how has no one ever filmed this before?!), to its fanciful duel ending, the film is both an homage and a fresh updating of the Hollywood musical.

The 73rd Venice International Film Festival opens this year under the shadow of a tragedy – the earthquake that made scores of victims in Central Italy on August 24 - and wrapped in the glow of what seems to be its unique power – the fact that, for the past three years, Venice has anointed the favorite title, the one to beat come awards season. The tragedy led to the cancellation of the traditional gala, after the screening of the opening film – this year, the highly anticipated La La Land, directed by Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle and starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling as lovers in a musical-fantasy version of Los Angeles.

Harvey Weinstein and Mia Wasikowska talk about her latest movie, Tracks. Marking the 70th anniversary of the Venice Film Festival a delegation of Hollywood Foreign Press Association members, traveled to Lido Island across the lagoon from Venice, to attend the historic festival’s opening ceremony, meet with filmmakers and look at films for Golden Globe consideration.

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